Xuan Yuan 7 Review

This was my most anticipated game due to the hype of just all the new chinese devs making games for the upcoming years, games like Lost Souls Aside, Project Eve and Black Myth Wukong and many more. The games seem to almost not be real because they take a while to come until Xuan Yuan came and was the first to release.

Xuan Yuan 7's story is about Taishi Zhao taking care of his sister Taishi Xiang who has a condition because she was 1 year old and Zhao was i don't know 6 and they got attacked by an army and Zhao and Xiang mother and father died but there family bought them time to escape. A fire had occured and this was never really explained if this was the reason or not for Xiangs condition, but im guessing the fire and the inhaling of the smoke is what made her sick. Taishi Zhao been taking care of her ever since that day and constantly makes medicine for her. He is a hunter and he helps this army do certain jobs helping them fight so they pay him so he can buy Medicine for his sister. He takes one task to help the army and they encounter an enemy, a mistwalker and they get attacked. Prior to that Zhao gives his sister a whistle to blow if she was ever in trouble while he was away. He hears the whistle and rushes back and sees the village they were at has been attacked by the Mistwalker. He sees his sister being held by it and the army he was helping about to attack it, The Mistwalker stabs his sister and tosses her than the army fires arrows and Zhao uses a scroll called Elysium and he slows down time so he can grab his sister and get her out of the way from the arrows.

The general Mo Huang becomes suspicious of Zhao and Zhao carries his sister away who is dying and he goes to the cabin and uses the scroll to teleport to a dimension. In this realm he begs a king who is locked in this vault to save his sister. The King claims hes a bird named Jipeng he agrees to help Zhao and his sister Xiang and teaches Zhao a spell to take the soul of his sisters body and embed her soul in a object thats precious to them. Zhao sister comes back as sorta a ghost but people can see her but can't touch her. The King tells Zhao its temporary but he can revive his sister if Zhao can get him out of the Vault hes locked into, so Zhao travels with his sister looking for a way to free the king and get Xiangs body back.

Exploration

So the exploration and stuff is like Witcher pretty much just low budget its not an open world map you can explore but theres a lot of areas you can go to that isn't seperated by load screens. In villages there side missions you can take and a game of chinese chess you can play which is pretty fun actually. Than theres merchants to buy items and in certain villages merchants specialize in certain items in case you need something specific. The villages or in the land there are chest you can find that have items for crafting, there is also some very basic platforming like how basic Horizons platforming was were you just climb stuff. Thats pretty much it there aint much to do really. The side quest are often times following footsteps than fighting an enemy theres nothing really compelling or a good story in them or good characters to go with it like Witcher has.

Gameplay

The combat in the game i thought was fine i didn't really have no big problems with it and just the performance and animations of the game that was lacking which ill get to in a bit.

The combat, you have light and heavy attacks you have a dodge and you have a block and if you time the block right you can also parry. Theres potions you use for health and taking from witcher theres a few potions you can make. Health potions that restore your health gradually, Attack potions increasing your attack for a set amount of time and defense potions to withstand more attacks. Zhao can also change stances in the combat.

Taishi Zhao's stances he gets are good for certain things. Hes got an Ox stance which is good to stun enemies allowing a finishing move like old God of War. He got a Wolf stance causing high damage to pierce through enemies. Tiger Stance which is good for groups of enemies together. Than there are 3 special stances from bosses and to be honest these did not help out all on hard mode.

There are special stuff in combat you can do like use a party members special attack or you can use a stances special attack. Zhao also has another special attack where he uses elysium when this circle is filled and this slows down everything for maybe 10 seconds. The party is fine as well they actually help you out, they can't die but they get taken out for a few minutes before they come help again.

You level up and in the menu there is a skill tree with basicaly nothing to do in it but switch stances. You get more attacks for the stances just by using them in combat. Than on the menu there is Elysium, and this is where you use items to upgrade you or your party members weapons and armor and accessories. You can upgrade the buildings of Elysium so you can make stronger equipment. It also has fusion because monsters drop souls and you can use them to fuse together and get stat increases and effects, i barely used these though. When you upgrade your weapons it does change the appearence of the characters weapons which i like unfortunately its just with the weapons and not the armor.

Enemies

The enemies in the game theres not much you have about 8 enemy types and 2 variations for monsters and 5 variations for soldiers. This didn't really bother me til like maybe 15 hours in because they do space out the enemies early on but late game you'll often see the same types again and again.

Bosses

Bosses are pretty good in the game although early on it felt like there was performance issues in two of the early ones. You fight this Monkey Tiger looking thing called Taowu and the fight is supposed to be in darkness and i couldn't really see well in this fight and the camera was pretty bad for this fight but after those two the rest of the bosses i didn't have issues with. The bosses like the monster ones have really cool designs than the soldier bosses have cool stuff in them as well. The fights didn't really feel like cheap for the sake of being cheap like the souls games. In fact the game really didn't have you dying in one or two hits at all except for maybe one which is the fight before the last fight.

Negatives

I wasn't really disappointed in the game at all but it has some issues that hold it back a lot. Xuan Yuan i felt needed to be more polished and it needed much more time. A lot of the moments in the game and cutscenes felt very flat because it was missing something, like a cutscene would happen but it felt like they were incomplete or they needed another cutscene to transition better, There are also times in the cutscenes were it feels like the sounds are late or theres just no sound at all, so it makes the cutscenes not flow well, it feels like they skip a frame. The characters facial animations don't convey much emotion to which causes a disconnect in the cutscenes and it leaves the scenes not being impactful.

The side quest are really not important or they don't help you learn anything about the world at all, there just there to give something to do or help level you up or give you money and items.

The locations lack variety, this world is mainly just grasslands and theres some caves and thats about it... so the world and locations look the same until late game when you get to the snow area. Again this game doesnt have the budget around it so it is to be expected.

Some small stuff was when you explore with a party and you climb up a ladder or a wall your party doesn't follow you until you turn around and they just appear so its kinda immersion breaking. When you get cutscenes sometimes it feels as though the Zhao talks more than the others, like early on when your with Xiang she gets ignored most of the time like shes not there which made me think no one could see her but that wasn't the case.

The Final boss was really cool but it felt like it came out of nowhere i mean you expect that somethings gonna happen but in the game it just occurs with no warning no build or anything, Its very odd its not even really alluded to.

Oh and the Subtitle translations in the game are not the best but that didn't bother me.

Final Thoughts

Xuan Yuan wasn't great but it wasn't bad either, It just needed more time and more polish and more smoother animations and better facial expressions to get rid of the arkward flatness of the scenes. The combat was fine and did not have the overly hard dark souls cheapness, you mostly die from being overwelmed by a bunch of enemies and not just getting one shot or two shot by enemies. It had kind of an old school difficulty because some checkpoints were not generous so dying you may have to do a alot over. I liked the characters and there was some nice stuff in them but i do wish the story was told a bit better and there was more time to build because some stuff feels like it just happens so abruptly. This girl boss on the enemy side she just shows up randomly out of nowhere never mentioned or nothing and than something happens with her she gets taken over and theres just nothing to really get engaged with, she looked cool but kind of a waste with no build to her or nothing. It does talk about her in the journal but reading about it just doesn't make me care a whole lot.

I enjoyed the bosses and i wish the locations in the game had more variety and didn't look the same. The music was pretty good as well.

I was happy for one of these chinese games to release finally because it felt like they never were coming out. I do believe one of these chinese games by the newer chinese devs will be amazing though and if Xuan Yuan 8 releases in the west i'd definately get it still.

My Score for Xuan Yuan is a 6